"We will expand upon the 200K lines of code we've already open sourced (detailed at waveprotocol.org) to flesh out the existing example Wave server and Web client into a more complete application or 'Wave in a Box,'" North said.

"This project will not have the full functionality of Google Wave as you know it today. However, we intend to give developers and enterprising users an opportunity to run Wave servers and host Waves on their own hardware," North said.

The project will feature an application bundle with a server and Web client, supporting real-time collaboration using the same structured conversations as the Google Wave System, North said.

Other capabilities include support for threaded conversations; refinements to client-server protocols; gadget, robot, and data API and support for importing wave data from wave.google.com.

"While Wave in a Box will be a functional application, the future of Wave will be defined by your contributions. We hope this project will help the Wave developer community continue to grow and evolve," said North.